C is 22 months, and is is into coloring big right now, I just give her some crayons and a pad of construction paper and she's all over it. She also loves the wooden puzzles. She's very into her shopping cart also, she has the plastic Fisher Price one. She loves to roll it around and put her toys and dolls in it. Cozy Coupe is another good one.

I was just thinking this! J's birthday is Saturday so DH and I were discussing what to get him. J is still obsessed with balls - any kind of ball. So we're getting him a mini basketball hoop that mounts to the wall and a small 6" basketball.

He also loves Daniel Tiger so we're buying him two Daniel tiger books. And lastly - he is huge into building. Building anything. Blocks, legos, train tracks- he's more into the building aspect of toys than the imaginative play aspect. So we're buying him a bucket of duplo legos as well.

I know he'll love them.

Puzzles are a great idea - I want to get him some more of those too. It's so hard to decide what to buy him because I want to buy him everything! lol We are going through his toys this week and packing several up that he's outgrown or doesn't play with.

Early on she has always loved coloring on her easel. We have a cheap one from ikea but I like it bc it's neutral and easily folds up behind our storage system. We have a giant roll of paper on the chalkboard side and she uses crayons. we just put a small pack of them in a plastic bag and she would take them out and identify the colors. And she would love putting them back in the bag...good practice learning to clean up after herself now she dumps them out to color (there's a little shelf on the easel) but cleans them up when she's done. On the other side she used dry erase markers and she just loved drawing with those ...of course supervised. She still loves markers

I also bought a giant flat storage bin (the big ones to put shoes under your bed or something) and a giant bag of rice (like 70 lbs) and let her use that in the garage as a "sandbox". It's easy to clean up (just sweep out of the garage) and she loved digging with her shovels, cups, construction site toys. I read on the YHL blog that play sand isn't that safe so I opted for rice in our home. I don't mind if she plays with sand when we go out.

She started out with these giant floor puzzles when she was 24 months. I think it's easier for little ones bc the pieces are big and bc it is pretty easy to figure out bc it's the alphabet...so it's easy to see what's next

@locavore_mama: @sandy: we have the ikea easel as well and J LOVES it! we mostly just use the chalkboard side for now, but I would like to get a roll of paper to attach to the other side. @sandy, how do you attach the roll of paper?

@Mrs. Pen: @locavore_mama: it's such a great little easel and love the price! And I don't mind if she gets paint or marker on it bc I could just easily paint it myself. We bought I before she was born so kids could play with it when they come over and it's still as sturdy as ever. And folding it flat to put away is the best part of all...super easy.

I'm in bed right now but I'll go downstairs and look how it's rigged up in a minute. I just assumed it had some attachment bc we've always has the roll of paper on there but maybe my husband bought something....let me go see

My almost three year old is really into his peg board and building so we got the Melissa and Doug workbench and a battat build a plane.

He's also an active kid so he has a fisher price basketball hoop, three in one tball set (prefers the pop up setting to the tball), and a mini golf set. He just watched the jake pirate that jake did mini golf and now does the exact same thing.

@Mrs. Pen: so it looks like it's definitely part of the easel as it was sold. I tried to take some photos. They sell the rolls of paper at ikea too. And we just feed it through the chalkboard side and clip it up top with binder clips and feed down through the top of the easel

- another vote for the ikea easel! My LO uses hers daily to draw and practice her letters. She's also really into coloring books and ate supplies like markers and crayons
- play kitchen - she loves to cook and "clean" her kitchen
- puzzles- she outgrew the wooden melissa and Doug ones so we have the ones like @sandy mentioned. She plays with those daily.
- fishing game: like this one but it's fish, not ducks. http://mbeans.com/janod-ducky-fishing-game.html?childid=56951&utm_medium=cse&utm_source=google&gclid=CNXOkprI07wCFQNufgodvSYAfg. It's helped her learn all her colors.
- she loves playing with beans in a huge Rubbermaid tub. It's a pain to clean up but keeps her occupied for a long time.
- she's obsessed w/ anything alphabet or color related, and loves to show off to us. We have the leap frog alphabet laptop and letter factory, and alphabooks. She likes when we ask her to find a specific letter or to line them up.

@sandy: is that your playroom? It looks SO FUN! J would love a room like that
I will have to stop by a craft store and see if I can get a dowel - shouldn't be too expensive. I'm fairly positive mine didn't come with one.

My 28 month old is very into pretend play these days. So, she has a lot of dolls and blocks and trains and does infinite cool things with them. She's also gotten really into Mr potato head, so I just bought her some of those.

@Mrs. Pen: yes it's our playroom. It's our formal living room at the front of the house...never used it except for holidays so made sense to convert to a playroom. I love that she's on the same floor as me when I'm cooking or doing laundry. And all the toys stay in that room so we're not overwhelmed with toys everywhere. She loves it

I have purchased dowels at Fred Meyer which is a kind of like a nicer wal-mart...has a grocery store, shoes/clothing, housewares and also garden/paint/automotive the dowels were near the paint section. So I bet Walmart would have them for cheap too.